Recent Posts: Brain Popcorn

Happy Holidays, all! I apologize for my few months of silence, and my excuses include learning a new role at the New England Museum Association, where I am the new Director of Engagement, running an annual conference, and being out of the country on my honeymoon (reflections on traveling in Japan and lessons I gained […]

When the Museum Education Roundtable had our annual forum last week, featuring Keonna Hendrick and Marit Dewhurst speaking on “Dismantling Racism in Museums,” none of us knew that by this week, the events in Charlottesville and the fallout thereof would be bringing the discussion of racism, not to mention monuments, memorials, history, voice, and tolerance […]

If you missed my webinar yesterday on creative writing for museum professionals, you can catch up now with the recording and download a pdf of the slides, available for free on the NEMA website. You can also watch it directly below, or just have a look at the slideshow without my narration.

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Seeking New Landscapes? Read these!

Writing that is strongly situated in its setting has always appealed to me, as a place-based writer. So when I saw the call for submissions for “landscapes” from all the sins, I had a lot of fun looking through my ‘ready for sending’ folder and hit ‘submit’ faster than the Flash on a sugar rush. To my great glee, one of my personal favorite poems also caught the editors’ eyes, and is now published in Issue 5 of all the sins: contemporary landscapes.

Guillaume Vogels, De vijver in de winter, 1885, oil on canvas. Currently owned by Stedelijke Musea Sint-Niklaas, used with creative commons permission.

I wrote “Belgian Skylight” when I was living abroad, teaching kindergarten in Brussels. It was a phenomenal year in which I learned a lot and traveled a lot and spent a lot of time watching the light change out my window in my garret bedroom at the top of the house I shared with two other teachers. There’s a kind of light in a Brussels winter that was especially conducive to writing, probably because it was the kind of blank white that was reminiscent of a page waiting for words, both promising and melancholy. As we head into the cold season (finally!) here in New England, it’s lovely timing for this piece to come to life.

I highly recommend the whole of issue 5; there are some gorgeous pieces of art within, both visual and literary, so do go check it out!